Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The Methodology of God

The wonder of life can’t be viewed in the Biblical time-frame – creation in six days – because that doesn’t agree with geological fact, but it does appeal to religious zealots since it makes sense if one posits a God who is able to bring about instantaneous creation by His will.

The problem is that God (using the mechanism of evolution) proceeded at a snail’s pace and created a plethora of life-forms, which existed for millennia before man appeared.

Those life-forms – most (dinosaurs for example) had nothing to do with the advent of man or the eventual purposes of humankind.

Flora and fauna came and went, without impacting the arrival of man or the continuation of mankind, as a species.

Why the delay – billions of years – before man appeared on Earth.

If God is able to create life instantly, as some think, why did it take so long to raise up a sentient being who had the ability to ruminate on his own creation?

Evolution allows for the advent of man, but even evolution has its fits and starts, and only produces mankind by Darwinian quirks that are either coincidental or brought about by an intervention of some kind that one might attribute to God.

If evolution is a God-process, then why the protracted process? What was the divine point in making evolution such a laborious procedure?

The problem lies in how one imagines the mind of God.

If God is interactive with creation (mankind, the universe, anything), why does that interaction drag on and on – and to what end?

The methodology of God or Nature – with its spurts and failures (the Neanderthals, for instance) – may have a rationale to it, but that rationale has illogical, even insane, elements in it.

Existence is obvious, but the meaning of it is not.

And after billions of years, one would think the meaning of life would be as obvious as the reality of life is.

But that’s not the case, and so man’s existence is muddled, without coherence or sense.

God or evolution (which is a process with rhyme and reason but no cognizance) doesn’t provide answers as to why man is here, on Earth.

Man just is. And theological ramblings about a divine plan that is obscure but must be in place are as insane as the rise and fall of the great lizards, the dinosaurs.

God’s methodology is and has been painstakingly slow. It bespeaks a divine laziness or divine incomprehension of some kind.

Evolution can’t salvage God’s methodology, as evolution is just as batty.

God is either an imbecile, or a sadistic presence that has fun with creation, at the expense of the things created.

And that, dear reader, may be why you suffer existential anxiety, if you really think about it….